11 July 1979

From the archive: Kremlin bows to capitalist craze for jeans

After years of hesitation and reflection, the Soviet leadership has decided to yield to popular demand, and to authorise production of one of the most classless garments devised by capitalism - blue jeans.

America's three leading jeans manufacturers, Levi Strauss, Bluebell, which makes Wranglers, and the VF Corporation which sells under the Lee label, have been invited to tender to help the Russians to manufacture jeans.

Executives of the American corporations have been interviewed on Soviet radio, and have told listeners to the Soviet Union's World Service that, pending domestic Soviet production, they were hoping to obtain an order to supply jeans for sale during the Moscow Olympics next year.

That news will come as a great relief to Western tourists, who often are accosted by young Russians ready to give almost anything to be allowed to peel off and keep the jeans the visitors may be wearing.

Until now, official Soviet doctrine has held that Western jeans, being figure-hugging, are a symbol of Western decadence, and thus to be avoided in the same way as pornography. The idea of spending precious hard currency on acquiring the know-how to make them, and the secret of the cut, must have seemed to Soviet planners almost like toying with original sin.

None of this stopped the young, and even the middle-aged, from coveting jeans almost more than any other Western product. The East Germans hoped to satisfy some of this yearning by producing their own, without outside help. But any discerning East European recognises the imitation for what it is, and dismisses the GDR product with disdain.

The Hungarians, who have greater economic licence than any other Communist block countries, were the first to break the jeans curtain by going into partnership with Levi Strauss. The factory in Hungary opened last year, and could sell infinitely more than it is able to produce. Part of its output is reserved for export, and less than half is sold in Hungary itself.

Now the Soviet Union has decided to change its mind about jeans, no doubt the rest of the comrades will ask to follow. Whether they will all want the two or three makes that have become household names, or whether they might consider some of the competitors who are carving a place for themselves in the West, remains to be seen.

But in any case, it is a long way from the ultimate in Western jeans fashions: jeans below, with above a pure, preferably Chinese, silk shirt.

Historic articles from the Guardian archive, compiled by the Guardian research and information department (follow us on Twitter @guardianlibrary). For further coverage from the past, take a look at the Guardian & Observer digital archive, which contains every issue of both newspapers from their debut to 2000 - 1.2m items, fully searchable and viewable online